Pope-apalooza. Tickets were to go on sale at Square’s email deadline this morning—10 a.m.—for a June 14 Sox Park celebration of Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV.
■ The price on Ticketmaster: $5.
■ Confronted by another round of threats, Chicago’s Facets movie venue has—for a second time—canceled plans to screen an Israeli American rapper’s film about student protests and the war in Gaza.
■ Following a hiatus in the aftermath of an incident in which he allegedly stripped off his clothes on a flight from Chicago to Munich, Art Institute director James Rondeau is headed back to work.
How he beat the rap. The Sun-Times finds that murderer and former Chicago drug kingpin Larry Hoover’s path to a presidential commutation ran through Mar-a-Lago …
■ … thanks in part to the rapper formerly known as Kanye West.
■ Chicago’s FBI chief says Hoover “deserves to be in prison” …
■ … which he is …
■ … unless Gov. Pritzker follows Trump’s lead.
‘From the moment Elon Musk was portrayed as Donald Trump’s co-president, with his son wiping boogers on the Resolute Desk during a presentation, Musk was going to have to go.’ Law prof Joyce Vance assesses Musk’s departure from the White House—but wonders, “What exactly did Musk … walk out the door with? … You can be sure he didn’t walk away empty-handed.”
■ Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Jack Ohman: “Musky odor begone!”
■ Economist Paul Krugman says digital corruption is consuming Washington: “Time to call crypto … a criminal enterprise.”
■ Lisa Needham at Public Notice: “The Trump admin’s mockery of the courts goes beyond defiance.”
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “There’s one thing stopping Trump: laws. Clearly we need to get rid of them.”
MAHA-ha-ha-ha-ha. NOTUS: Health and Human Service Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” report cited studies that don’t exist.
■ White House prevaricator Karoline Leavitt calls them “formatting issues.”
■ Andrew Egger at The Bulwark: Kennedy’s “committed to a wildly distorted view of the scientific process.”
■ Healthbeat: Federal tracking of the bird flu has gone from bad to worse.
‘Long overdue.’ A Tribune editorial gives “full-throated approval” to at least some of the mass-transit legislation making its way through the General Assembly—including creation of a single fare system.
■ Lawmakers are also weighing plans to fight rising electric bills with more solar and wind projects and an end to the moratorium on nuclear power plants.
■ They face a Saturday night deadline for gettin’ stuff done.
‘Explicitly neo-Nazi roots.’ Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s department has published a reorganization chart that includes an “Office of Remigration”—a word that reporter Marisa Kabas says is widely used by Europe’s far-right extremists.
■ Pulitzer winner Ann Telnaes illustrates her warning: “Trump administration to vet social media accounts of student visa applicants. It won’t end there.”
■ Developing coverage: The Supreme Court today cleared the Trump administration to end temporary legal protection for 500,000 people from four countries.
■ Tribune alumnus Ben Estes, writing from Louisiana, explains how the slave trade built and sustained New Orleans.
Studying while Black. The Investigative Project on Race and Equity reports that Illinois public college campus cops pull over a disproportionate number of Black drivers,
■ An ex-University of Illinois quarterback, now a Chicago police officer, has been arrrested—accused of stealing $300 worth of baseball cards.
‘Wet, wobbly and wacky describes a major figure in the news this week. Who is it?’ So challenges past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel to lead off this week’s news quiz.
■ Your Chicago Public Square columnist scored a disappointing 6/8 on this go-round …
■ … and an apt 50% on a 50-themed 50th edition of Justin Kaufmann’s Axios Chicago quiz.
Dingus of the Week. Columnist Lyz Lenz’s pick: The Democratic National Committee, “considering a proposal to spend $20 million ‘to reverse the erosion of Democratic support among young men,’ especially online.”
■ The Intercept: New York-area PBS station WNET has scrubbed its archives of at least three educational TV episodes that discuss transgender identity and drag expression.
What’s that smell? Smoke from wildfires burning in Minnesota, North Dakota and Canada was headed Chicago’s way today.
■ All of Wisconsin was already under an air quality alert.
They-a culpa. In a highly detailed, self-indicting piece—“Human mistake No. 5: My own”—Sun-Times CEO Melissa Bell walks readers through the things that went wrong in publication of an artificial-intelligence-generated summer reading list filled with books that don’t exist.
■ Sun-Times sibling WBEZ: That special section was filled with even more crap.
■ Pledging to fully embrace AI, Business Insider is laying off about a fifth of its workforce …
■ … a move that Insider’s editorial union condemns as a “brazen pivot away from journalism toward greed.”
Replace cable—cheap. Consumer Reports explains how to assemble a compelling assortment of TV content, complete with local broadcasts—for about $25/month.
■ Disney+ and Hulu are adding perks for subscribers.
Adieu, Mr. Holt. Former Chicago TV anchor Lester Holt signs off tonight from NBC Nightly News.
■ Critic Richard Roeper, who took a buyout from the Sun-Times in March, has joined the review website named for his old mentor, RogerEbert.com …
■ … beginning with a look at a Netflix documentary about the still-unsolved Chicago-area Tylenol murders of 1982.
‘An enlightening explanation of something.’ A French-derived word with that definition was the winner for a 13-year-old in yesterday’s centennial National Spelling Bee championship.
■ A professor who serves as pronouncer for the Boston Citywide Spelling Bee explains just how demanding that job is.
Thanks. Joe Hass made this edition better.
■ And every edition’s better because of readers like you.